Last week I was talking about free writing and writing by hand, and I guess the most popular and useful way of putting this into practice regularly is by journalling. Journalling seems to have come into its own recently – a few years back I don’t remember seeing as much about it but I suspect the pandemic may have put everyone into a state where they want to try and nurture their mental health as best they can.
It’s good to remember that journalling is not the same as writing a diary. You don’t have to record your day. Unless you want to, of course. But the danger of that is that it quickly becomes boring, or at least it has done for the last year:
Stayed at home
Worked from home
Walked round the park
Stayed at home
And so on.
The other danger of only writing your day is that you can spend a lot of time ranting and capturing a lot of negative feelings. So it’s important to try and write the joy too.
Journalling should be about capturing how you feel about things, so if you are keen to record your day then you can add this extra dimension to it. And journalling by hand allows you to connect your mind to the page, which can take all sorts of different forms. It can be all about capturing a moment, a scene, using all your senses; it can be about how you feel; it can be recording a memory or moment from the past. Or you can use prompts and see where they take you. The great thing about journalling suddenly being ‘the thing that people do’ is that there are loads of prompts out there at the moment.
And I shall be adding some more! Every Monday over on my Instagram site I’m posting a journalling prompt for you to try. See how you get on!
Prompts are a good way to help you start writing if you’re feeling a bit stuck but want to keep at free writing. You can use these to loosen up, a warm up exercise or just as an experiment and see where they take your thoughts. I know there have been days when I’ve looked at a prompt and thought, “oh what?” but given it a go and found all sorts of random things appear on the page. It can be fun, as well as beneficial.
If you do find yourself delving deep into feelings or memories, it is important to remember that journalling is not the best place to explore everything. A lot of people use journals as a tool to deal with day to day mental health issues but you can stumble across quite serious issues, at which point please do consider getting extra help. However, as a way of getting out your daily, weekly, whatever frequency thoughts, a journal is a really useful tool.
The other great joy of journalling is that you can buy some lovely notebooks for the task. I tell myself this is part of the motivation to keep writing, but as you may know, I am a stationery addict. My preferred journals are usually A5 size, clothbound and with ribbon bookmarks. My current one also has gold sprayed edges.
You can also get some really good ones with prompts in at the moment. I really like the new Women’s Prize Journal, which celebrates 25 years of the Women’s Prize and has short pieces about each winning book as well as room for your own notes. A perfect volume for a reading journal perhaps?
London-based stationers Papier have teamed up with Gurls Talk, a mental health charity for girls of all kinds, to create a Reflections journal – I think this is aimed at young people and adults rather than children. But the great thing is that there are some good products on the market for children too. It’s one thing handing a lovely blank book to a child but they will soon lose direction. Journals for children allow them to direct their thoughts, extract positive lessons and reflect their feelings without the task being too arduous. E and I have been trying out children’s journals: we like the Happy Confident Me journal or the Happy Self journal, both of which have prompts, quotes and fun activities for children to start journalling and exploring their feelings in a safe way.
So tell me this, is there anything else out there that allows you to take a few quiet moments, make yourself feel better, get in tune with your thoughts AND allows, nay positively encourages, you to buy new notebooks? No, there isn’t. So don’t forget, drop by my Instagram on Mondays and try out the prompt I’ll put up each week, and see how you get on!
Happy journals!
Susan E Barsby 